Killer of two South Bay boys pleads guilty to 1989 rape, slaying of woman

J. Harry Jones

A man scheduled to be sentenced to death here next week for the 1993 murders of two South Bay boys pleaded guilty yesterday to another murder in the 1989 rape and slaying of a Florida woman.

In what officials from both California and Florida called a unique proceeding, Scott Erskine admitted the crimes from a conference room in a downtown San Diego courthouse equipped with teleconferencing equipment linked to a Florida judge.

He was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole by Florida Circuit Judge Lucy Brown – a sentence he likely will never serve in Florida because he is scheduled to be sent to death row in San Quentin.

In exchange for Erskine's plea, Palm Beach prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. Erskine, 41, also agreed to tell Palm Beach homicide detectives the details of the June 23, 1989, slaying of Renee Baker whose nude, strangled body was found on a beach in a wildlife sanctuary.

Erskine also agreed to be interviewed about an unsolved Palm Beach homicide, the March 1989 slaying of Lena Teinella. Erskine's San Diego attorney, Larry Ainbinder, said after the hearing that Erskine knows nothing about that case and the plea agreement keeps anything he might say in that killing from being used against him.

Erskine was convicted last year of molesting, torturing and murdering 9-year-old Jonathan Sellers and 13-year-old Charlie Keever, whom he abducted March 27, 1993, while they were on a bicycle ride in the Otay River bottom.

During his trial, witnesses from Florida had testified about Baker's killing, even though Erskine hadn't been charged in that slaying then.

Erskine was connected to the Florida cases after District Attorney Investigator Patrick Russell and San Diego Police Detective Miguel Penalosa went to areas in Florida where Erskine lived in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

They encouraged police to compare Erskine's DNA to evidence collected in some of their unsolved homicides.

The plea agreement came together last week after Ainbinder approached Palm Beach authorities and suggested the arrangement. A self-described death penalty abolitionist, Ainbinder, a deputy public defender, for years has tried to get San Diego authorities to accept guilty pleas in the boys' deaths in exchange for a promise not to seek Erskine's execution.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and her predecessor, Paul Pfingst, refused to do so, saying some crimes demand the ultimate punishment.

The sentencing hearing in the murders of Keever and Sellers is scheduled for either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how quickly Judge Kenneth So deals with some post-trial motions.